"Starscream, why are you so angry?" asked Jetfire, without the barest hints of sympathy.
His tone was spiteful - mocking - and almost downright evil.
The Decepticon's homebase, the Nemesis, had fallen out of the sky, and Jetfire was sauntering around as if the incident didn't concern him in the slightest.
What little of the wall-paneling that remained, trembled in and out, like a grotesque pair of lungs. A random leg fell from the rafters, and the mech it had come from was conspicuously absent.
'Some medic he is.' Starscream mocked. The level of anger he felt heaved like a slab of drowning molten magnesium, burning with all the ire his damaged body and tired spirit could muster. 'What a mess! I can't believe I'm just ACTUALLY going to DIE in Trypticon's glorified corpse...what a classy way to go...'
He almost laughed, foundering completely when he remembered Jetfire's question.
"What! What a dumb question! Everyone else on this fraggin' ship has been screaming into my audials for the past entire cycle! Of course I'm angry!"
"What happened to the commlinks?!" Jetfire rubbed his head, his audials ringing from all of Starscream's...well...screaming. Just message me like before, you frack-cracker!" Jetfire shouted as he weaved through an endless amount of burning wreckage - the scrappage was spewing out an endless amount of inky-gross black smoke - blocking much of Jetfire's view. What structures that managed to withstand the constant burning, sported decorations of charred twitching gore from every possible crevice of a once proud warship - the army it had carried, was reduced to mere rumor - a murky-slick dream of Starscream's processor.
The predacon was pelting towards Jetfire's direction a bit too keenly.
He was fast.
Professional.
In tracking his prey.
"What happened is I learned how to control Trypticon's vocal-cords. It's a lot harder than you'd think." Explained Starscream, with a raspy sputter at the end of his speech.
Jetfire clasped his servos against his skull at Starscream's volume. He hardly noticed when the predacon careened into his backside with the grace of a car crash, biting down into the bulk of one of his shoulder pauldrons - missing his neck - as the novice hunter it was.
'Pathetic.' Jetfire snarled.
Without a cry of pain, or even a hint acknowledgement of the beast, he grappled onto its neck with both his servos, pinching the meat of its protoform as if it were a mere scraplet-fly being crushed between his molten digits.
'Stupid animal.' He thought, before flinging the predacon off of his shoulder without ceremony, into the depths of some nearby hole, a smoldering pit of metal.
Jetfire watched blankly, boredly, as the predacon careened down into the unknown nooks and crannies of the wreckage below - the beast twisted, somersaulting in midair like a scandalized weasel, falling down, down, a line of scattered graves...
Before disappearing entirely.
If the beast broke its neck when it landed, Jetfire didn't care.
The predacon had its tail curled beneath its belly in humiliation, but this Jetfire didn't see, as the best ran away.
Eventually, into a cover of trees.
"Y-yes! I get it! Now shut up, Starscream, you're rocking the whole ship like its meant to float!" Jetfire screamed, as he eyed the area he'd thrown the predacon down, expecting the beast to clamber back up, like a mewling pup - perhaps the beast would dare to flying up to rocket into his faceplates.
Or.
Or...
'Hrmmm, now there's a idea...maybe I can just float away...imagine...' Starscream thought, recalling how Deadend and a few of his sparklings appeared enamored with the idea of conquering Earth's oceans.
'One could disappear down there.' Some sparkling had whispered to Starscream once. He'd never forgotten. 'I bet it's peaceful down there...' And Starscream tried to close his eyes, to pretend he was underwater, caressed by the pull and tug of tides...
But no.
Starscream could only watch, as agony engulfed him.
To lay there helplessly.
To die, impossibly slowly.
Starscream had countless cameras and eyes.
That he couldn't turn off.
He could only watch.
Jetfire stood on the precipice of the wreckage, the highest point he could find which jutted into the sky, built from the broken tail-end of the ship...as the rest was left to fester...forever, in the Nevada desert...
To Starscream it was obvious...
Jetfire wanted to fight, more than ever.
Were it any other point in time, Starscream would've been proud of his creation, his golden child - dear Jetfire, so ready to conquer, to consume and to burn the battlefield.
Jetfire's plating itched, heaved with a primitive need for violence.
His stunted armored wings, shuddered in pleasure.
At the mere idea.
But as the seconds ticked by, it became clear the predacon wouldn't be returning.
Jetfire could only pout, as he was left standing in an ugly pile of nothing, and the dead.
There was the occasional cough, a wet blubbering for "mercy," carried across the air...
But Jetfire saw no living mechs, just cooked meat to fill his picky belly - experimentally he nibbled a chunk of flesh from a mech, much too crushed to identify.
It tasted like a spoiled, sweaty limestone casserole - corroded with a suspicious green, and a sprinkle-crunch of sulfur.
"Shut up? Shut up?!" Starscream gargled a patch of static, coming off as properly jaunty. "I will do no such thing! Do you know how much pain I'm in!?"
'I guess a lot.' Jetfire sarcastically thought; his sympathies he did not express. He couldn't exactly give painkillers to a massive titanic ship without wasting the clinic's entire supply.
'And all those meds would probably ease the pain only for just a couple joors. I doubt Starscream would feel the difference.' Jetfire paused midchew, evaluating the destroyed scenery. 'Dang, and Starscream is in like... ten different pieces. How do I give painkillers to that!? Where's his spark-chamber?' And Jetfire looked around if only to prove a point to himself, for the most solid looking piece of Starscream - only to give up.
Jetfire decided the squished casserole-corpse he'd found earlier was much more appealing than looking for Starscream's buried spark.
So Jetfire settled on shrugging his shoulders, hoping Starscream would get the message - that he didn't care.
There was no solution, but to suffer.
"Oh. It's. Gaahhhh-aaahhh..."
The walls hitched, as if Starscream was holding in a gutted, pained cry.
"It's everywhere!"
Starscream was right.
Pain and fire, it was everywhere.
It was a depressing scene of destruction strangely familiar to Jetfire; and he became much more concerned about keeping tabs on any more signs of the predacon, than whatever sobbing complaints Starscream was currently drowning out the ship and his audials with.
'I'm sure Starscream can deal with it.' He thought, but as the crying went on - he couldn't help but to feel bad.
'I've been promoted to medic, only now I can't do anything. Everyone is already dead.'
He patted an intact hallway wall - hoping it was a soothing touch - that he was causing Starscream more comfort than pain.
...
...
...
"Now now," Starscream coughed, the noise much too moist and disgusting, for a sound coming out of a P.A. system. "As, uh now, now as much fun as you're were having...Jetfire, 'playing chew toy for the predacon,' I suppose now is a good time to announce that the Autobots are standing right OUTSIDE!"
"Ratchet, you're not supposed to be out here."
"Really, Optimus? Because I see a lot of dead and dying mechs out here." Said Ratchet. "Where else could I possibly belong?" Already Ratchet had pulled free seven vehicon soldiers from the wreckage - their alt-modes were left unrecognizable from the respective caved in messes which constituted their backsides.
They were still alive, but Ratchet hesitated a handful of nanoclicks before jumping in to repair their various damages, tenuously patching the worst cuts of their protoforms - it felt a bit like a waste of time, trying to keep their wounds from gushing energon out onto the surrounding desert grass.
Vehicons were easy models to mass produce and to replace - but, they weren't meant to withstand a hit from anything more deadly than a stun-gun.
'It's sad really. These guys never stood a chance, against any of us.' Thought Ratchet.
"Not that we don't appreciate you on the frontlines, old friend , but who have you left to watch over the base in your absence?" asked Optimus, with a raised brow as he evaluated the terrible scene of dead mechs galore. The Nemesis had crash landed, sundered against the ground like a wet husk - reminiscent of the sad state of affairs of the Decepticon-cause itself.
"Isn't it obvious? I left Jazz in-charge. He was in the middle of a stress-test of the security systems when this disaster occurred and he couldn't leave his office chair unattended." Ratchet paused to chuckle, in the middle of stitching a vehicon's split-side - the bot already long into recharge. "You should've seen his face, Optimus."
"As amusing as I'm sure it was - get ready Autobots. There's two mechs approaching us from the wreckage." Optimus pulled out a blade from his subspace - a shimmering blue masterpiece.
The star-saber, and it hummed with the whirling malevolence of an already dead sun.
Optimus raised it above his head, giving a railing cry as Arcee, Bumblebee, and Smokescreen took up battle positions alongside him. Reluctantly, Ratchet stopped his work, the vehicons painted a morbid picture - and a shadow cast over their dying bodies.
The shadow...
The shadow fell, crushing a vehicon's head into a staticky-splatter - if Ratchet's patient wasn't dead before, he was now.
...
...
...
"It's Jet FIRE!" Shouted Jack the "human," who was dangling precariously from the edge of a cliff.
He wasn't supposed to have come.
All humans were expected to stay-on-base; especially after the death of Miko.
The groundbridge coordinates had opened up near a cliffside; and obviously, the Autobots hadn't factored in that one of the humans might "sneak away," to join the battlefield.
"Look, his insignias! They're purple!" Screamed Smokescreen, who hardly spared a thought towards Jack. "Decepticon-scum!"
"You say that like its supposed to mean something." Snarked Jetfire, backpedaling to position himself better against a smoldering pile of debris. "Honestly, I don't even remember switching my wing-brands from red to purple - it must've happened while I was in recharge." He shrugged his shoulders, trying his best to look like an innocent mech.
Still, his words didn't seem to sway anyone, from a fight.
'All the better...' He thought.
"Traitor! Jetfire, how could you?!" Shouted Jack, with all of his tiny lungs. Such a delicate thing Jack was, made of meat and carbon...
And no doubt.
Hopes.
And dreams.
Jetfire eyed the small organic Jack, up and down his smile stood, too tall and wide as he gave the small teenager his full leery attention.
Up on the cliffside Jack was, so Jetfire began to climb.
"Get away from him!" Arcee shrieked as she leaped towards Jetfire, with her heel-tips poised to gore beneath his protoform. She made a beeline for Jack, but Jetfire got there first.
Jack the human.
One utterly defenseless.
Unprepared.
For his precarious situation.
It was enough to make Jetfire chortle in delight, and he laughed as he dodged Arcee's kicks and jabs to his side-belly and backside. "Rude." He snarled, and Bumblebee's bellowed a charge of honks and beeps. "I haven't even done anything yet..." He muttered, looking down at Jack, showering him in a dangerous orange light.
"No armor. No weapons. Not even a knife to stab me with? Tisk. Tisk." Jetfire's face became mere inches from Jack. "Tell me, what did you expect to do?" He paused, pretending to think as he watched Jack struggle to not fall away from his precarious position, hugging onto a rock for dear life. Jetfire dared to poke Jack's back and spine with a claw tip, like a cat toying with a mouse. "What did you expect to do - except to get in the way, for your fellow Autobots?"
Jetfire's tongue flickered out as he spoke, tasting Jack's ambient terror. "Are you going to try to kick my teeth in, Jack?" Jack gave him his best defiant frown.
Then.
Jack screamed.
Before...Before...
Before being scooped up by Ratchet.
Ratchet's engines had stalled, heaved, with a sort of righteous fury - holding Jack delicately and away, into the palm of his hand.
He looked at Jetfire, stoic and calm - already familiar with the type of monster he was.
"Jetfire." He said.
"Ratchet." Jetfire said.
Before anymore words could be exchanged, Jetfire ran, sprinting on all-fours - followed closely behind by a screeching whirring cascade of Arcee's blades. Bumblebee and Smokescreen in their alt-modes chased after Arcee, intent on pinning down their foxy-orange quarry.
Despite his near-death experience, Jack seemed in high spirits, and Ratchet looked him over carefully, for any head injuries.
"Jack, you're not suppose to be out here!" Ratchet shouted as gently as he could, so as not to blow out Jack's tiny eardrums. Despite it all, Jack coyly smiled, "Isn't that what Optimus just said, to you? That you should stay-on-base? Come on Ratchet, I wasn't about to miss this! I've never seen so many dead Decepticons!" Whether Ratchet cringed from Jack's oddly valid point or his disturbing enthusiasm over dead mechs, it didn't change his decision.
:"Optimus, I'm returning to base. Jack snuck out onto the battlefield and I'm taking him back.": Comm'd Ratchet.
:"A wise decision, friend. Stay safe. Jack will get a stern talking to later.":
:"Oh, leave the scolding to me Optimus, please. And good luck out there. Do me a favor and come back in one piece.": Ratchet paused, almost forgetting one last important question ":Arcee isn't going to kill Jetfire, right , Optimus?":
...
...
...
:"Optimus?":
:"Negatory, Ratchet. I'd be more afraid for Arcee.":